Four scans apiece from Assault on New Olympus Prologue and Deadpool Team-Up #899, featuring the Incredible Hercules.

In descending order of seriousness, we start off with the Deadpool issue, in which Deadpool and Herc get trapped inside a labyrinth by the villain team-up of Arcade (who wants to kill Deadpool for horning in on his assassin business) and Nightmare (who wants revenge on Hercules for the whole "God Squad" episode). They get attacked by a bunch of robots, but thanks to Nightmare's meddling the robots look like, respectively, the embodiment of Deadpools' two other head-voices and a bunch of Hercules' dead children.

Eventually, Deadpool figures out how to solve the problem: he lobotomizes himself by separating his left and right lobes, cutting off the other two voices (so he's now sane):

Herc turned down someone? (even someone who lured him into a deathtrap?)

I bet Cho is sorry he missed that.

In more serious terrain, over in iHerc it's time to face off with Hera (whose plan is, perhaps unsurprisingly, to kill all humans in the Fourth Extinction of Man). Though we still don't know how. Athena and Amadeus strike out with all the other outcast gods, who are fence-sitting until they see who comes out on top. However, Hebe's a big hit at the homeless shelter, and gets interviewed on the news, which sends Herc off to retrieve her. He stumbles across her while she's sucking face with Peter (who, amusingly parallels my earlier criticism about how his aunt now apparently thinks it's okay to set him up with homeless people), which leads to Peter getting punched through a wall or two, and a fight with Spider-Man. Despite his free-lovin' lifestyle, Herc's views on marriage are (understandably) pretty Ancient Greek.

Eventually, Herc buries Spidey under a bunch of cars, but Hebe intervenes and tearfully asks that he explain why she was such a bad wife that he ran away (and constantly steps out with other women). Herc says it was never about her.

Speaking to the whole issue, the writers do an amazing job with Hebe here. Imagine being the daughter of the Goddess of Marriage, having your marriage fail, and have mom tell you it's all your own fault (though that's an interesting belief when applied to Hera's own mindset, really).

Anyway, everybody's friends now, and back to dealing with the Hera question.

no subject

One would assume that Hera wouldn't get far with Hebe on the subject of marital fidelity, what with Zeus replacing Hebe as the gods' cocktail server with his own lover, Ganymede. Sadly, I doubt Marvel will go there.

no subject

If anyone can, could someone please post either deadpool fighting his own quotation boxes (which sounds hilarious) or Herc walking in on Hebe and Peter and the broo ha ha that followed? I'd be forever thankful for one or both!

no subject

He's not supposed to be right; both Hebe herself and Spider-Man point this out.

I'm actually interested in whether this is meant to signal a permanent shift, since it certainly seems like that (though in that case, Hebe had better watch out...'cause writers have been writing playa-Herc for forty years now, and largely ignored her existence in order to avoid this issue).

Actually

with the recent Cho-Athena twist I'm thinking we might have a Death of Hercules, rise of Cho thing for a little bit (Cho would obviously go to Hades for Herc- though I do wonder how a hypothetical death of Herc would turn Cho on Athena, I mean he's always been a quick to anger, totally over the top response thing and if he thinks Athena set the whole thing up :) )

no subject

Regardless of whether the text shows him to be wrong, it seems OOC for him to hold the opinion at all. For one, that's merely one facet of a whole host of really gross gender biases that comprised ancient Greek views on women, none of the rest of which we ever see from him (and rightly so, the man's supposed to be a likable hero). It's just bizarre to try to reconcile him respecting the agency and personhood of every other woman he's ever met with him thinking he owns his wife. For another, he's just never been a particularly proud or possessive or jealous guy. He was sad when Namora rejected him, not angry or insulting of her virtue, and he considered it her decision rather than fighting Namor for her. In fact it was he who told off Namor to the effect that Namora has the right to sleep with who she pleases.

no subject

I wasn't entirely sure about either. Possibly what they're going for is he's got some latent traditionalism in him; it would make sense, though it is a bit hard to match up with his pretty equitable attitude toward his casual relationships.

no subject

I dunno. Keeping in mind that I'm a few months behind and haven't read these issues, so am speaking generally: how many of us know that person in real life who's a liberal member of the majority and holds all the enlightened views and even practices them for the most part, but then knee-jerkily reverts to type when confronted with the potential impact of those views on the most intimate parts of their personal life or their past? Heck, how many of us have been that person? Or both? It seems pretty realistic to me that Hercules could be relatively modern-thinking with Namora, who he's only known in the 21st century, but then have a traditionalist freakout with Hebe, whom he got married to thousands of years ago.

Amusingly, back in the 90s Herc had a team-up with Spidey and tried to convince him to party hard with Crete and Spidey wouldn't because he was married and a teetotaller. Careful what you wish for!

no subject

I don't think so, no. Deadpool nabs Monty as his weird way of thanking him for a psychic reading and to exploit Monty's abilities for gambling rather than to go out drinking. Monty does get sort of wasted at one point, but I believe Deadpool is sober when that happens.